Status – I start tomorrow


   
 
The last two and a half weeks have been pretty crazy. Tried to get all the arrows pointing in the same direction and hopefully meet some place, before I went to China a week ago.Now I’m sitting on my bed in a very nice hotel room in Jiayuguan feeling so excited. But I am also very tired because of the last couple of weeks.As you have probably noticed, there have been some fairly major changes to the website lately. It has been widened and there is more information on the front page. I have also added some flags so that different nationalities can get the help they need.

The only two biggish things remaining now are to get the map updating system working (that sounds very fancy, and it is, but it still needs to be touched by human hands before each day’s coordinate is shown on the map) and there is also a little polishing work left on the picture gallery. I can’t wait till these two things are finished so that I can start concentrating on the walking.

My brother comes over in just a week or two and I am so happy that he will be joining me at the beginning of the trip. My mother and father have helped me enormously lately, to get the last details on equipment sorted out. Many thanks!

I will be walking from the first beacon tower of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall to the Jiayuguan Fortress tomorrow. Only 6-7 km, but that was the plan remember?

. Life (as I know it) is going to change totally the next two weeks. More radically than probably ever before.So far, I have got away with my poor Chinese, as in Beijing one can usually communicate a little in English. From experience though it is harder to find English speaking people along The Wall, but I will improvise and that is part of the fun.Physically things are going to change a great deal too. Although I start with easy walking, I still have a rucksack to carry.

This is what I have been looking forward to for SO long:

To sit beside my tent by the desert in the evening. To look at the moon. To start thinking new thoughts and perhaps pick up thoughts I left behind years ago. To experience the intense silence. To be alone, but not lonely. And to know that for the next year, I will be living my dream.